The Lay of the Land

Wow. Touring the community just makes us love it even more.  We got up between 6:45 and 7:15 (depending on whether we were on the breakfast crew) and walked the length of the area (maybe two miles? maybe less?) to visit the fish farm where 12 or so fish cages are anchored on sticks in the water and stocked with between 400 and 1000 fish (depending on size).  We went out to the cages in a couple of low boats and sidled right up to the cages where our host Dona Odila (pronounced oh-GEE-luh) threw in some hard food pellets and the fish went into a frenzy to get to them. 

We learned a little bit more about how they started the fish farm and how Saint Mary’s participated in growing it in past years.  We made plans to return to feed the fish later, with the possibility that some of us will actually go into the cages with the fish and get up close and personal with them.  

We took the long way around to get to another related project from past years: the fish food factory.  The locals learned how to make high protein food from the elements all around them to save the money, time, and hassle involved in buying food from far away São Paolo.  The 2015 SMC group cleared and area and laid the foundation and first few feet of bricks in the walls of the large structure we visited today.  There was no production today but there will be during the time that we are here and, of course, we will participate.  

From there, we stopped by the community water tank and learned about the vast difference this grant-funded project made in the health and wellbeing of the community.  It involves a deep groundwater well, a microfiltration system, a huge pump that gets run twice a day, and a gravity-driven system of pipes that deliver water throughout the community.  

As we left the water tank, we took a quick look at the soccer field where we are likely to play at least two games against local men and two games against local women.  If past history is any indication, we are not in danger of winning many of these games. (But let it be known that our women are the current defending champions.  Unfortunately, the last game our women won in 2017 is the one and only game any of our teams have ever won against our Brazilian opponents.)

We then visited the community garden and chicken coop that were built over a series of SMC trips between 2014 and 2017.  The main keeper of the garden, Vicente, has had some health problems that involved a surgery in December and both the garden and the coop have fallen into a bit of a state of disrepair.  But because we know what it takes to clear and turn around a patch of ground here because of prior DIRT projects, we can see that it won’t take a huge amount of work to revive both of these projects.  It is important to find other community members to help support Vicente and his wife Madalena, so we might need to hold some comprehensive community meetings to see who wants to step up.  

We returned home for lunch (piraricú fish, pork, beans, rice, pasta, and salads, with acerola and maracuja juices to drink) knowing that our next appointment was nearly three hours away.  We capitalized on the time and did some organizing of our camp (with more to come) and some of us caught up on laundry.  The most shrewd of us did some organizing, took a quick swim in the river, and also caught a quick nap.  Turns out that not that many of us qualify as “shrewd.”  

Jaron in particular was one who made sure that a swim was on the agenda, but he expressed our ongoing inability to grasp the vastness of the rivers here when – after finishing another job --  he said: “I just want to go into the ocean.”  We don’t have an ocean but he and many others found their way to the river after lunch for a dip.  

We had arranged to visit the beekeeping operation of the family of one of our friends here named Aldair. We went back behind his family’s home and checked out the unusual (to us) hives of the unusual (to us) stingless bees that are native to the area.  Aldair’s family lured some swarms of bees out of the forest and into their vast property and now they – like several other local families – harvest the honey and, to a much smaller extent, the pollen, wax, and royal jelly.  We tasted the honey and loved it.  It’s thinner and less sweet than honey we are used to in California groceries and it turns out they use it a lot differently than we do, as they focus primarily on its medicinal properties.  

Some of us headed away from the bee zone to rejoin Odila at the fish farm so that we can swim in the cages with the fish.  Others hit the river, while others did laundry or got more things organized.  Everyone is working on videos and photos daily as well and they will come to you somehow through these pages when we can make it to a place where we can upload them.  

Thanks for your patience as we settle in here in our beautiful sanctuary from our normal lives.  We are thinking of you and have lots more to tell you than what you are reading here.  Please keep checking back and post comments if you have something to tell us or ask us!

Dona Maria Odila gives a tour of the fish farm from the boats.

Families from the Anã’s community grow fish in cages along the shallows of the Arapiuns Lake.

Rylee and Boo very excited about learning about the sustainable fish farm! 

Aldair  (ow-dai-ee) shows the DIRTies Anã’s bee program. These bees are stingless and came from the forest. It took many years for the locals to learn the best way to keep them and make use of their honey. Families are able to participate by taking care of their own hives. The honey produced in the hives can be sold to tourists or people in the community and can be used as food or for medicinal purposes. 

Aldair extracts fresh honey from one of the hives. He let us all taste it and it WAS AMAZING! It was so sweet and pure, and nothing like U.S. honey. 

A sign on the front of a community store in Anã.

A photo of Dona Odila in front of some beautiful amazon scenery from our morning tour of the community. 

Lauren Smith living her best life with her new friend the local monkey Nico. 

A photo of a telephone booth known as “the big ear” to the locals.

Aldair, a member of the community, explaining how the honey in Anã is produced.